Sunday, November 30, 2014

To celebrate the publication of A BOX OF PLEASURES - a complete box-set
of all four of bestselling Irish author Evie Hunter's PLEASURES titles,
together for the first time - Penguin Ireland are offering readers a
chance to experience Evie...

If you've never read Evie or even erotica before, this is your chance to
try it. Go on, we won't tell anyone! And you might be pleasantly - or
even pleasurably! - surprised...

Pngnuin Ireland are also having a #pleasuresunboxed event next Saturday 6th December where readers and fans can ask Evie anything. Follow
@pleasureswinter on Twitter for more.

Saturday, November 8, 2014

“Grayson Sender has
been holding onto a secret for what seems like forever:
""""he"""" is a girl on the inside,
stuck in the wrong gender's body. The weight of this secret is crushing, but
sharing it would mean facing ridicule, scorn, rejection or worse. Despite the
risks, Grayson's true self itches to break free. Will new strength from an unexpected
friendship and a caring teacher's wisdom be enough to help Grayson step into
the spotlight she was born to inhabit?”

My thoughts:

In this review I will be referring to Grayson as ‘they’
because neither he nor she feels 100% appropriate. This is my personal interpretation
and not meant to offend or confuse anybody. This gender issue doesn’t surface
in the book itself since the story is told in the first person from Grayson’s
perspective.

Up until recently twelve
year old Grayson had been able to look in the mirror and see who they should be
rather than who they were. Lately the strategy hasn’t been working anymore. No
matter how hard they imagine and pretend all Grayson sees is the reflection of
a boy rather than the image of the girl they really are.

Having lost their
parents at a very young age, Grayson lives with his Aunt, Uncle and two
cousins. Because Grayson holds the secret of their identity close, they haven’t
been interacting with other kids their age for years. The happiness when it
seems that Grayson may have found a new friend after four years without, broke
my heart.

“(...) until I feel up to
explaining to Aunt Sally and Uncle Evan that I have plans with a friend for the
first time since second grade”.

When Grayson auditions for the female lead in a school play and gets
the role it appears to be a dream come true at first glance. It isn’t long before
reality comes crashing in. That reality is very well dealt with in the book. It’s not all pain and
soul searching. Grayson’s life is far from easy but it isn’t unbearably heard
all the time either. It would have been easy to turn this story into a tear jerking
drama; easy but lazy and unsatisfactory for the reader. The way the story is
told I got a wonderful appreciation of the shifts taking place in Grayson as they
balance between the joy of being allowed to portray a girl and the fear of
making themselves the focus of ridicule and bullying.

“Everything keeps
flip-flopping back and forth, from bad to good, over and over again. Sometimes
everything is light. Other times, everything is dark.”

It would have been
very easy to dislike, if not hate Aunt Sally but a lot of her reasons for
wanting to stop Grayson from taking the female lead in the play have to do with
her worrying about them (and his cousins) getting bullied in school. Having
said that, it got a bit harder to feel sympathy for her once she reflected on
how Grayson’s choice would reflect on her parenting skills. Still, all those
fears on Sally’s part are undoubtedly worries every parent of a transgender
child would have. What did bother me though was the fact that especially the
adults in this book were a bit one dimensional; either understanding and
supportive or the opposite. While that may work very well for the age group
this book is aimed at (and I’m not even sure about that, it’s easy to
underestimate kids), it left me rolling my eyes once or twice.

I really appreciated that this book ended on a
positive but not miraculous note. Grayson has come a long way but the author
doesn’t suggest and the reader doesn’t walk away with, the illusion that all
Grayson’s problems have been solved. This is the (very difficult) start of a
complicated journey. Grayson has taken the first steps and, we are led to
believe, found the inner strength to be true to their real identity. Nothing
else is promised.

It was hard to read
this book without comparing it to ‘Wonder’ by R.J. Palacio and I
don’t mean that in a bad or derogatory wayl. Like ‘Wonder’ this book deals
with a youngster who doesn’t quite fit in because they don’t conform to the
norm. In both books the main character has to face their otherness in relation
to the rest of the world and both characters manage to come out on the other
side maybe not so much victorious but definitely intact and empowered.

“(...) when I look
at myself in the giant floor-to-ceiling mirrors, I finally see myself the way
I’m supposed to be - my inside self match up with my outside self. And now,
everyone else will finally see it too.”

Overall this was a wonderful book I’d
recommend to any reader aged 10 or over. Understanding otherness is something
we can’t teach our kids or ourselves early enough.

Sunday, November 2, 2014

“Still in his twenties, Percy Callendar is one of the richest men in the world. In an attempt to find the future love of his life—and because he likes to have fun—he builds the ultimate haunted house and assembles a select group of men to go through it.

Sage Donovan, owner of a fledgling IT company, is the seventh applicant to receive an invitation. He figures completing the maze—something no one has done yet—will guarantee fame and maybe fortune, and he immediately accepts despite having a little problem with anxiety.

Witches, spiders, ghosts and ghouls are the least Sage has to deal with, because before the night is over, he will face his deepest fear, changing his life and Percy’s forever.”

My thoughts:

They say good things are worth waiting for. I’m not the most patient of creatures and waiting for Amazon to get their act together and release‘The Haunted Maze’was very frustrating, but...I have to admit it, well worth the wait in the end. Talk about building anticipation...

Theo Fenraven amazes me. Every time I start one of his books I find myself diving into something completely new. This author doesn’t repeat himself, he flirts with genres and then moves on to the next one, always flexing his artistic muscles and pushing himself and the reader to extend their boundaries. Of course the amazing aspect of this flexing is not so much that he does it, but that he not only gets away with it but manages to own each of the genres he tackles as well as put his personal spin on it.

It’s hard not to fall for Sage. He’s presented as an honest, good and reliable young man who wants to do and be the best he can be. His perseverance when faced with his deepest fear was described so well I almost experienced his anxiety as well as his determination to overcome it.

I wasn’t entirely sure what to think or make of Percy. His scheme is, of course, utter madness and yet there is something sweet and almost innocent about his hope and belief he might find a man who will love him in the middle of a haunted house.

The same is true for Richard, Percy’s lawyer and friend. I couldn’t quite pinpoint him. Like Percy he sounds impersonal and ‘big business’ a lot of the time. And yet there are these gestures and casual remarks suggesting both men might be basically good. This of course makes the characters more interesting and realistic. While having a clear cut distinction between sympathetic and despicable characters can make a story easy to read, it rarely makes a book or the characters in it fascinating. And if Percy and his haunted house are to be described as anything, fascinating would be the word to use.

Once Sage enters the Maze the story blew me away. The various scenes, the different kinds of horror and the puzzles he has to solve were all cleverly thought out and presented so well it was possible to visualize the creatures and monsters. Sage’s internal conflicts as a result of rationally knowing everything he sees and experiences is fake and the very real fear he experiences regardless, was recognisable and made him all the more realistic. His internal dialogue as well as the comments he makes to Percy, who he knows is observing him, added a wonderful touch of humour to the story and put a smile on my face on more than one occasion.

I loved how Theo Fenraven managed to portray a burgeoning relationship between two characters who spend most of their time apart from each other. Initially the only interaction between Percy and Sage takes place without face to face contact, through short conversations over the intercom. And yet, despite the lack of direct contact the reader is in no doubt these two men are getting to know and appreciate each other more with each new horror Sage faces.

I really don’t want to say anything else about the story. Exactly what imaginative horrors Sage runs into and how he deals with them should be a surprise to the reader. The same is true for what happens when Percy’s carefully laid plans are thrown into turmoil. Reading this book is very close to visiting a haunted house. The reader, like Sage, has no idea what to expect next. Each turn of the page may bring a new surprise or shock, just like turning each corner in a haunted house would bring you face to face with something else to make you startle and scream. Very well done, Mr. Fenraven.

The Haunted Maze, despite its title, is a love story, be it that we only get to see the very early stages of the romance. In most books that would result in me wishing the story had been longer.The Haunted Mazedidn’t leave me feeling disappointed though. By the time the story ended I’d seen enough of Sage and Percy to believe it was possible for them to be something special together. This was one book in which how they got to that point was far more interesting than what might happen afterwards could ever be.

As always – and I do seem to reflect on this in every review of books by this author - the writing inThe Haunted Mazeis breathtaking and awe-inspiring. I’ll never understand how Theo Fenraven manages to create such vivid pictures with so few, yet very carefully chosen, words. Reading his books is pure reading delight for me and I can’t wait to see what he’ll be coming up with next.

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About Me

My name is Marleen. I'm Dutch but have been living in Ireland for well over 15 years now. I have a passion and love for reading and books. Since early 2008 I have been lucky enough to have been working part time in the library in Bailieborough, Co. Cavan where among other things I run the library reading group.
I will read almost anything that has words in it, and post my thoughts on everything I read in this blog:

Review Disclaimer

In this blog I write my thoughts on every book I read. Some I will have brought home from the library, some will have been bought while others will have been sent to me for review. I do not get paid for reading and reviewing any books and all opinions are mine and mine alone. Whether a book was borrowed, bought or received will be indicated at the top of every review.

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* Feel free to email me with an offer, but please have a look at my blog and the books I've read in the past first to check if your genre is one I'm likely to enjoy.

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